1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to electronic financial transaction communication systems and more particularly to a system providing secure rating information using means available on most telephone equipment, either POTS (plain old telephone system) or ISDN (integrated services digital network), based upon consumers' satisfaction relating to products purchased through electronic transmission media such as the Internet. The system may be generalized to provide a secure weighted voting system based on a voters list indexed with or keyed to, caller IDs.
2. Description of the Prior Art
More recently, electronic cash transactions have gained desirability with a particular emphasis on conducting such transactions on the Internet. The advent of electronic cash transactions has led to rapid popularity of electronic shopping. Electronic shopping on the Internet appears to be the wave of the future inevitably replacing much of today's paper catalog shopping and perhaps even in-person shopping. This recent trend lends itself particularly well to shopping for software type of products in particular, due to the user's opportunity to try a demonstration or sample of the software product prior to making its purchase.
Providing shopping opportunities to users of the Internet media, may necessitate a method and/or means for providing purchasers of Internet products with an opportunity to rate the particular products purchased. This can be very useful to the seller of the product in terms of providing input or feedback regarding the product. Moreover, where consumers' feedback regarding a product is favorable to the seller, scoring or rating information can be a very effective marketing tool for the seller. Additionally, potential customers may gain more insight from such information prior to purchasing products.
The basic difficulty that exists with today's financial transactions on the Internet transmission media is security and privacy concerns resulting from the easily readable nature of electronic information being transferred on such media. As messages move across the Internet, they can easily pass through many numbers of computers, any one of which can be utilized to copy the messages. Where rating information relating to a product is made available on the Internet, there needs to be added security measures taken to prevent tampering of such information. For example, to promote sales of his/her product, a merchant may be tempted to manipulate rating information available to the Internet users regarding the marketed product.
To address security concerns, current solutions generally employ encryption techniques. In fact, almost all cash transaction schemes depend on encryption for privacy and security enforcement, as will be discussed in greater detail shortly.
Among other reasons, encryption is generally used to (1) protect information such as credit card numbers, (2) establish identity of either the merchant or the buyer, (3) verify information, and (4) provide electronic signatures that are legally binding and not likely to be forged. To this end, both public key and private key encryption or decryption schemes are deployed. Private key schemes depend upon a single "shared secret" for encryption and decryption while public key schemes publish one key and maintain another key as confidential. However, the downfall in employing these schemes as stated in the April, 1996 issue of Business Communication Review (page 4) is the requirement for a unique key associated with each user which results in not merely hundreds rather literally millions of encryption keys.
Models for secured digital money transactions currently seem to fall into two basic categories, credit card sales and digital travelers checks. Both categories depend upon encryption for security. A useful text describing prior art is Digital Money by Dan Lynch and L. Lundquist published by John Wiley & Sons 1996 ISBN 0-471-14178-X. A brief summary of several digital money transaction schemes is also found in the May 1996 issue of WebSmith Magazine in an article entitled "Digital Cash." An example of a prior art digital money transaction is where the subscriber using "touchtone" or personal computer and modems (not through the Internet) sends payment information to a company by the name of CheckFree who in turn uses the existing U.S. Federal Reserve or MasterCard RPS System to transfer funds electronically from the subscriber's checking account to the creditor, or in some cases, a check is forwarded through the U.S. Post Office. The transaction is ultimately recorded on bank statements or cancelled checks. CheckFree's subscription software on the PC keeps track of transactions and telephone subscribers receive a monthly statement.
Several prior art digital money transaction schemes in use today are listed and described in the U.S. patent application entitled "On-Line Secured Financial Transaction System Through Electronic Media" with Ser. No. 08/660,559, filed on Jun. 7, 1996 now U.S. Pat. No. 5,729,594 to which this is a continuation-in-part application and which is herein incorporated by reference.
Much of the same problems that exist in prior art scheme relative to the above-referenced patent application also exist in offering secure electronic rating information. A common difficulty among prior art schemes arise from connecting the transacting parties to the existing banking network. In FIG. 1, we observe that CyberCash, an electronic financial transaction scheme, exists as an interface layer connecting CyberSpace to Banking Space (Banking Net in FIG. 1). Layered architectures are of considerable importance. In 1979 the United Nations CCITT (now the ITU=International Telephony Union) International Standards Organization (ISO) began work on the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) architecture. The Seven Layer OSI standard model was published in 1984. (See Uyless Black: "OSI-A Model for Computer Communication Standards", Prentice Hall 1991, ISBN 0-13-637133-7). In the abstract, the Financial layer is the same as any layer in the abstract, such as the Physical layer, the Data Link layer, the Network layer, the Transport layer, the Session layer, the Presentation layer or the Application layer. Prior art schemes interface the Financial layer to the TCP/IP transport layer, thus forsaking real network addresses and physical space for virtual Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in CyberSpace. When the Financial layer interfaces to the Transport layer, financial transactions occur between two Internet nodes (the client and the merchant server) whose IP addresses exist in CyberSpace.
This is shown in FIG. 2 where the client 10 conducts financial transactions with the merchant server 12 through the Financial layer 14. Between the local client system (not shown) and Physical layer 16, sequentially reside Application layer, Transport layer 20, Network layer 22 and Data Link layer 24. Financial layer 14 interfaces to Transport layer 20.
To further appreciate some of the drawbacks of prior art schemes for financial transactions, an understanding of network connectivity is necessary. There are primarily two types of networks in use today, switched and packet networks. Most voice communications (telephone lines, fax derivatives, etc.) use switched networks, while most Internet data communications, including packetized voice and video, employ packet routing networks. The switch network establishes a connected network by switching physical links until an end-to-end path exists from the caller to the called party. This obviously entails distance-base pricing for establishing the connected network.
A packet network (connectionless network) such as used in the Internet media, routes packets from node-to-node over local links until the destination is reached or the number of hops is exceeded. Each hop is almost free of cost. Therefore, the cost of packet communications is distance independent. The source and destination addresses are key to connectionless or packet communications. However, these addresses are not secure. The destination address can be changed and information re-routed or the source address can be changed for anonymity via re-mailers. Information cast into the packet network is, on the other hand, low cost, yet high risk.
It is key to note that connected lengths in switched networks, have physical source and destination addresses, and these physical addresses (especially wired local loops) provide a degree of security and, if desired, lack of anonymity that is valuable in a business sense.
The typical Internet communication is through the switched network to a packet router. All communications proceed through both the switch network and the packet routing Internet network. This is effective, but does not make full use of the distinct features associated with each type of network. Prior art schemes for conducting financial transactions employ multi-network schemes having both switch and packet routing. The switched network is primarily only a means for connecting to the Internet. This limited use of the switched network completely discounts and ignores the advantages, i.e., the inherent privacy and security of a switched end-to-end connection, associated with switched network systems. The inherent privacy and security of a switched end-to-end connection between physical addresses is the goal of prior art schemes using encryption and digital signatures which are employed as an attempt to accomplish in CyberSpace the functions accomplished by the built-in financial mechanisms of the 800/900/XXX directory number systems.
As one might expect, with the increasing number of Internet users, the Internet is overflowing with free information. When information can be easily sold over the Internet, the quantity of information on the same will explode. Consumers need a means to evaluate products before buying, a need filled in the print world, by "Consumer Reports", "Movie Reviews", and similar publications that advise potential consumers of the relative quality of the products that are for sale.
In Cyberspace, information can be both generated and distributed almost at no cost, thus there will be far more information than the most efficient critic or scorer can handle.
In today's world there are many instances in which accepted scoring mechanisms are manipulated when they clearly should not be so manipulated. Recently, a major "Top Ten" list of books was manipulated by a complex ordering scheme where books were ordered in large quantities and distributed over many locations for the purpose of distorting the records relating to book orders. This resulted in the book in question being rated with higher scores in the "Top Ten" lists than actual purchases would warrant. The result was that many people were erroneously led to purchase the book based on its position in the list, rather than on the actual "quality" of the book. It is important to design security into any scoring system that will be used to guide peoples' buying behavior.
Accordingly, the need exists for a secure communication scheme for 1) evaluating products purchased through electronic or otherwise financial transactions and 2) providing such evaluation or rating information to those perhaps interested in purchasing a marketed product.